If digging in the soil in the Western part of Russia can yield you Nazi memorabilia, coins or even guns and heavy machine guns, trawling the lake or river bottoms (there are thousands of lakes and rivers around, by the way) can yield you something

more serious - WW2 tanks and planes for example. Here's an example of the rescue operation of a WW2 era battle tank being raised from the local river by enthusiasts, sponsored by the video game company that makes games about the tanks.

Yes, eighty thousand books were moved from one library building to another and are now waiting to be sorted while the shelves are being installed. A few Russian Far East universities combined their libraries

in a newly renovated building and now they have over two million items in the newly formed archive. Every book is going to be stamped with an RFID chip for self service and self check out.

The first exposition which showed the military condition of the Soviet Republic and the Red Army was organised in Moscow in the building of today's State Universal Store, and was opened by Vladimir Lenin on the 25 May 1919, following a parade in Red Square. On 23 December 1919 an order was issued for the formation of a museum-exposition "Life of the Red Army and Fleet" in the same location, whose purpose was to inform the public about the achievements of the

post-October Revolution Soviet Russia in military education, culture and political discipline in the Red Army and Navy. In 1951 the museum was renamed the Central Museum of the Soviet Army and in 1965 moved to its present location in a new, special building designed by architects N. Gaygarova and V. Barkhin. It was renamed once again, to the Central Museum of the Armed Forces of the USSR; it was given its present name in 1993.

A new meaning to the phrase "life on wheels" has found by Tatiana during her walk around a not very often used railway line. A few railway cars standing on the rails were re-equipped as homes with all the modern signs of making it a comfortable home - air

conditioning units, satellite TV dishes. Some cars have the additional wooden constructions built on the sides - you can see in the photo above the non-matching gray wooden huts linked to the train cars. Those are also parts of the houses.

The collapse of Russia’s arms industry in the 1990s really hurt the SU-34′s development, but it has recovered. A development journey that began with the aircraft’s maiden flight in 1990, as the T10V/SU-27IB, ended in 2010 with deliveries and fielding under a 5-year production contract, followed by a 2012 full rate production order. RIA Novosti put the plane’s mission simply: “The Su-34 is meant to deliver a

sufficiently large ordnance load to a predetermined area, hit the target accurately and take evasive action against pursuing enemy planes.” Other reports have gone further, stating that the plane is also meant to be able to handle enemy fighters in aerial combat. Given its base platform characteristics, it would likely match up well in the air against many of America’s “teen series” aircraft.

Exactly 15 years ago, the Russian army with around two hundred soldiers, marched over 600km across Serbia and entered Pristina, Kosovo to occupy the nearby airport "Slatina". They say this was the only airport around that was capable of receiving the heavy transport planes and NATO wanted to take control of it. However, Russian

commanders were said to be unhappy that most of the decisions in Kosovo and Serbia at time were made without consulting with them. They decided to bypass NATO and occupy a part of Kosovo by themselves, blocking NATO forces from using the vital airport and in this way control all the nearby region all by themselves.

Another series of photos of Kazakhstan from above. This time the helicopter with the photographer flew over the South-Eastern part of Kazakhstan capturing the colorful mountains, sometimes red, sometimes changing to white. "It makes me feel like I went to another planet", says the photographer. "Some of the landscapes look like

they are from Mars! It's a big pity that no tourist routes come here. I usually fly in military helicopters." Let's take a look. You might want to click on any of the photos for a larger sized view. via

When the first ever version of the Tu-144 supersonic airliner was conceived, they didn't build it all together in one factory. They built the fuselage in one place, inside Moscow city and then decided to move it to Zhukovski city where it could be supplemented with all other parts and systems. To

move such a thing out of the Moscow research center through the city streets they had to build specially-built trolleys that could negotiate the streets, as back in 1968, they didn't have a ready-made means of transportation for this task. These are a few photos of this event.

Believe it or not, but for the last Russian Tsar's coronation - the day when he got into power - they decorated the whole of Moscow city's Kremlin with electric bulbs, just like people decorate their houses now for

Christmas. Seeing these photos of the Kremlin with all the holiday lights on at night, it's really hard to believe that they were taken as far back as 1896 - almost 120 years ago! Photos are inside.